


Monsters In My Head

by oceansinmychest



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-20 09:07:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9484358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceansinmychest/pseuds/oceansinmychest
Summary: She travels to Africa to see him in his ruin. Where he drinks too much and seems delirious from loss. Takes place after season two.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'd written this for my dear Miss Ives many moons ago. I always thought Sir Malcom and Vanessa had quite a bit of chemistry, especially given that the Devil appeared as Malcolm in that clever skin.

She travels to Africa to see him in his ruin.

Where he drinks too much and seems delirious from loss.

She comes to him as some apparition – dressed up as a faux Vestal Virgin in black as opposed to white – with her silk and cotton swaying, the fabric of her dress ghosting across the sad cloth floor of his tent.

“I've never been better, Miss Ives.”

He argues. He lies.

She can tell by the way his beard has begun to come in again, scratchy and coarse like the taste of his tongue. But she doesn't taste it now. Only the memory of him.

Vanessa Ives can hardly recognize the man with his red, red eyes and the cool, clammy sweat that beads across his brow. He's haggard and washed up, no longer the vainglorious explorer who pillaged and prided himself on his sex.

It's sad, in a way: how he's bastardized himself and fallen from glory.

Given all that he's done, it suits him.

Yet, she tells him none of these things. Of how he deserves this pain and punishment that's now self-inflicted. Of how he deserves to suffer for abandoning his family. For abandoning his newly found makeshift family. For abandoning her.

She judges not, because this is what the Book of Job tells her. What her God she once believed in told her before the Master whispered into her ear.

Before she was a Devil fucker and just a lamb seeking God's warm embrace.

“Come home, Malcolm.”

She neglects his title and when she says his name, it almost feels like home.

He falters, nearing that treacherous line of insanity that she's danced on. Fallen for. Sir Malcolm wipes his mouth with a calloused hand that's used to the comfort of a gun and a leathery, faded map. He drains the last of his glass, the scotch drying his mouth out.

“I cannot.”

It's the memories that transpire within his manor that rob the place of being a home. He thinks of lovely Mina, her personality shining brighter than the sun. He thinks of brilliant Peter, his wit destined for a scholar's path. He thinks of his wife and how he disappointed her. How he failed her.

As surely as he fails Vanessa now.

She's stronger. He notes it in her gait. In her stance. How proud she is with her hands clasped in front of her, ever the emblem of patience even when he knows her not to be so.

He thinks that she may be a devil conjured up by a witchdoctor. The witchdoctor's family slaughtered by his hand many moons ago.  
How can he admit that he's afraid when he's supposed to be the pillar of strength two girls viewed him as in their robbed childhood?

Sir Malcolm Murray opens and closes his mouth at a loss.

The winds howl outside, undeniably a banshee screaming to get in. He steps closer, his shoulders heavy with Atlas' guilt, his poise matching the hunter he used to be. Vanessa watches on with her penetrative gaze, her blue eyes black at midnight. He thanks whatever God is left that it's not the Witching Hour.

And he can't help himself when he touches her cheek to assess whether she's real or not.

She is.

Her pale flesh cool to the touch.

“There is nothing left but desolation and ruin, the cinders of a life we all renounced. Mina had been the thread that held us together and now that thread has unraveled, Vanessa.”

She wants to curse him. To strike his face. To inquire if their time together had been a waste. And if she had been more of a harlot pretending to be a lost daughter.

“--I am inexplicably lost without you as my map, Miss Ives. Show me the way.”

He clutches her wrists, his brows furrowed in almost a comical expression, but she knows its agony for a man to stomp on his pride like this. 

For a time, Africa had been home. For a time, his estate had been home. His children, his home. His wife, his home.

Now, his home is a woman who housed the Devil and flees from the demons in her head.

She knows him well. Well enough to know that he is her mirror and she, his.


End file.
